Thompson, Richard - Front Parlour Ballads (special!)
SKU
02-COOKINGVINYL47252
This is a really good, recent album by Richard. Mostly acoustic (and despite the fact that Richard is a monster lead guitarist, I may actually prefer him on acoustic guitar), with all the instruments sans the percussion performed by RT, it's definitely sort of a newer version of his great album "Strict Tempo", one of his great works of the 70s/80s.
Front Parlour Ballads is almost entirely acoustic, with all instruments but percussion played by Richard Thompson himself. Despite the basic approach, however, this is not a sparse album. His guitar playing is as complex as ever, and the songs stand comparison with any of his best. The opening track, "Let It Blow," is a funny account of a relationship conducted in the grubby glare of the tabloids, and "For Whose Sake?" and "Miss Patsy" are sterling illustrations of Thompson's ability to frame modern sentiments and stories within time-served folk idioms. "Boys of Mutton Street" starts with a riff which is surely intentionally an echo of Thompson's previously best-known acoustic song, "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," and "Solitary Life" sounds like it might be Thompson's take on Radiohead's "Fitter Happier." There has been bizarrely little recognition of the possibility, but after the resounding classics Mock Tudor and The Old Kit Bag, Front Parlour Ballads suggests that Thompson may well be in the prime of his long and extraordinary career."-Andrew Mueller